Sunday, February 1, 2009

A recent paper in the American Journal of Ophthalmology should convinced you of one thing - if your eyes are ever injured go to a plumber or something because those ophthalmologists are retarded. "Ocular Trauma and Visual Outcome Secondary to Paintball Projectiles" is a three-page paper detailing how show being shot in the eyeball with a bullet covered in dye is actually bad for your vision. If you need that explained then you shouldn't be an eye-doctor. You shouldn't be a doctor. In fact, you shouldn't be out on your own without a handler and a helmet with a padlock on it.

The idea that this had to be written down and distributed, ophthalmologist to ophthalmologist, is terrifying. What were they doing for those five years of medical school? Holding up pictures of random objects and asking "Which of these is an eybeball?"

Author of the obvious Dr Alliman writes that "high-velocity paintballs can cause tremendous damage" to eyes, which is a real newsflash to anyone who thinks they might just be incredibly eager eyedrops. He works at the Bascom Palmer Eye Institute, whose entrance exam is apparently being able to count how many eyes a human has two tries out of three, as it took a team of six people, seven years' worth of data, and 36 cases to reach this shattering conclusion.

Did they think the first guy just had weak eyeballs? That the first ten were pussies? Were they looking for Bruce Willis from Unbreakable? I understand the importance of proper scientific procedure, but after the first two dozen examples of "Paintball injection into eyeball = ruined eyeball", I don't think I'm being unprofessional in saying I'd have concluded "Paintballs. Bad for eyes" and called it a day.

They can't even pull the "It's for the good of the children" because

a) those blinded were all twenty year old men

b) if somebody thinks shooting balls of paint at each other without covering the one and only part of their body those can actually hurt is a good idea, a paper in an medical journal is not going to change their mind.

Likely Errors: Thinking that people who shoot each other in the face are worthy of study.

What the money could have been spent on: A huge, kick-ass session for the entire team at a registered paintball location. Then, with about thirty seconds thought, they could have reached the same conclusions.